Mr Steven Ng has been involved in this family business since he was 21 years old. This business was started more than 40 years ago. His hands-on experience and commerce knowledge enable him to grow the business up to this stage.

Company: BAN NEE CHEN PTE LTD Address: 45 Amber Road Website: http://www.banneechen.com.sg Interview with Mr Steven Ng Yong Ming by Indriyani Ikin on 24-May-2007. Student can be reached at precious_indri@hotmail.com   Business Profile: Ban Nee Chen Pte Ltd provides services like softscape, rock garden and waterfall design, garden maintenance as well as sales of plants and gardening accessories. It's been established for 40 years and currently employs more than 60 staff.   Interviewer's Comments: Mr Ng sees his work as a hobby. I remembered he said that even when he was overseas, he took pictures of plants, trees and grass instead of human being. More importantly, he values hard work which enables him to strive throughout challenges.   1. What is the nature of your business? Our company is more on landscaping design. We deal with glance, grasses and trees. We design hardscape which refers to those pathways, waterfalls, fountains, timber works. That would actually take up 60% of our scope of work. Then, 40% would be more on the retail sales. So, we're involved in anything deals with horticultural. Landscaping contractors like us is always a finishing contractor. The main contractor has done a lot of things, but there's always left a bit here and there untouched and unfinished. So, a lot of clients always make us as a finishing contractor to get involved. Not only the plants, the grass, the soil and the trees, sometimes there're a lot other things that are not touched up. Therefore they get people like us to finish it. So, end up from a landscaping contractor, we find that we're also having the skills of construction work. We're forced to learn all to get into this line.   2. What made you embark on this venture choice? This company was started by my parents more than 40 years ago. It was in Lorong Chuan. It's not that I choose to embark on this venture. I was actually quite reluctant, because as a teenager when you graduated from the army, we normally thought of going to Air Force or Army. However, we're not given any choice, because my father is in this trade so he didn't care whether I liked it or not. I must come in first to the business. From there I realised that it's quite an interesting thing because I dealt with many customers and workers. This is not easy and dealing with plants is even worse. There are at least 100,000 of plants' name. So, at that time I'm very much pressurised. So, I forced my self to learn. I studied on my own, learned from encyclopaedia, and asking those friends from horticultural trade. I also learned from hands on which is very useful. I pushed until one day I realised that this was quite interesting. So it went from reluctance, being forced to learn and finally being stabilised by getting more interest. Until today I'm still very interested in it because there're a lot of new products and technology coming in. There are a lot of things yet to learn and there is no full stop. That's why I'm still doing it today after so many years.   3. How does your business work? Because this company has been established for 40 years, we've already had the name in the market. There're clients who are actually being referred to us including their friends, and relatives. Sometimes we advertise in yellow pages and architecture books. We're also a member of Landscape Industry Associates of Singapore (LIAS) that would refer customers' call to us. We're also the contractor for Building Control Authority (BCA). This is from government sector that controlling the contractors. There're government tenders that could be seen through GeBiz. There are also walk-in customers that come through our retails. We actually sent our drivers to distribute fliers from area to area so to expose our company name.   4. Did you have the capital to start the business or did you have to borrow from someone to get started? In my father's time, they're able to start the business with the capital on their own because the cost was very cheap and their scale was very small. Now, it's different because the cost is high and this job is not the kind of job that people pay you cash. We have so many businesses. My retail department buys a lot of things from overseas like China, Taiwan, Philippine, Bangkok and Malaysia. If we only wait for client's money then we won't move. So, for certain reason of course we borrow from the bank. But there're always certain criteria and bank has too much paperwork. So, we go to some of our good friends and ask them to invest. They invest in certain products and after 6 month, 1 or 2 year sales, we'll return the money plus the profit entitled to them. Some people don't want to run business, attend meetings and so on. What they want is only to earn money. However, it's not too often because not everybody dare to do that.   5. Have your parents inspired you in one way or another? They're the one who started this; of course they inspired all my brothers and sisters. We admired them also. Last time when I was young I saw that it's quite tough. When we're at school at that time, we saw how hard my parents work. Like I said, it's inherited to us now.   6. What was your childhood dream? When did you decide that you would strike out on your own instead of working for someone else? If you asked me about my childhood dream, of course I would like to be an Air Force pilot. In the initial time I stayed in kampong not in HDB. When you stayed in kampong, there are chicken barns, dirty kids running here and there, naked kids, and so on. I think most of the children would think about aeroplane, think about navy, think about more office job, and wear tie, jacket and long sleeves. Those are one of the things. But for myself, like my son also, he's having the same dream now, it was to become a pilot. Even my son's also having this dream. He everyday wants to be a pilot. I think it's inherited from me. From the initial period of time, itÃ��Ã�¢Ã�¯Ã�¿Ã�½Ã�¯Ã�¿Ã�½s within a year when I was unwilling and then become interested in this business. However, in 1996, I joined other company for few years so that I could get more knowledge and to expose my self to other management, operation system and how they run the business as well as control the workers. YouÃ��Ã�¢Ã�¯Ã�¿Ã�½Ã�¯Ã�¿Ã�½ve been stick in the company and you never know your system is right or wrong.   7. Why does someone decide to be on their own rather than join an existing company? There are two types of person. One sees that the cake is nice and sweet so they want to bake their own cake. They want to be an entrepreneur because they think that they can earn a lot of money. By being a staff forever, they have no money in the bank. So, they want to earn money to be like their bosses who drive Mercedes, BMW... That's one kind of entrepreneurs. The second type of entrepreneurs takes entrepreneurship as a challenge. Those workers who are workaholic have big chances that they'd be entrepreneurs. If they're workaholic, they're able to take problems and heavy responsibilities. If the bosses don't treat these people well in term of the salaries, they are likely to come out to be on their own. They feel that they worked so hard and yet the return is not there. So they have to take the challenge. In their mind, they say, "If I can do it for you why I can't do it on my own? Maybe I was getting S$5000 under this company, but if I were to do my own job, I would only get 2000 in return, but I'm still happy because it's my own earning."   8. Are there at any point in your life that you experienced a significant event (WW2, racial riots of the 1960s, the Economic Crisis of the 80s or 90s, SARS, new competition or shifts in market behavior and trends) which affected or influenced you and your business that made you change the way you think and do your business? It was in 90s coming to early 21st century when there's economic crisis whereby I think it affected whether my trade or construction trade. The second time was the SARS. My clients are bosses of shopping centres, restaurants, lounge and so on. So, when they had no business, of course it affected my business. We realised now that not everyday is Sunday. We only have one Sunday in a week. There're a lot of cash flow problems. So, right now we're very careful in using the fund because what happened may happen again. It actually caused us to make some changes. When we buy things, we don't buy a lot. We buy a lot of things but of different quality and at smaller quantity, so that when we can't sell we won't have so many problems. It applies also in terms of equipment like computers. Last time when I got an office of ten tables, I'd say, "Never mind, we'll buy all 10 computers." Now it happens no more. When you get into my company, you share computer first until your job is confirmed. It's the same thing with considering clients to deal with. Like all other companies in landscape industry, we are afraid of doing business with main contractors. They're building, houses, condominiums contractors. We have to make sure that the money will come fast otherwise we don't want to do.   9. What are some of the challenges in starting a business from scratch? Nasty and picky clients are not a problem to me because I understood that those nasty ones are actually the ones who loved their house and careful in their spending. However, I think the problem would be the capital. Capital is a big issue.   10. Who/What motivates you? To run a company, you must have confidence. Even if I give you a million dollar, no one wants to start to be an entrepreneur. If you don't know how to run the company, don't know how to get the customers and you are not experienced enough, you're not confident to run the company. So, confidence comes first. The second thing is the clients from my previous company. There are actually a lot of clients motivates people to start as entrepreneur. Some of them may say, "Hey! You're doing so well, why don't you do your self? Your boss also never bothers you." The clients pushed them and reminded them. Then they'll think, "Hey! Why not? If I've some funds, why not I start my own business?"   11. Tell me about the first few customers and the first few years of business. 40 years ago we're still in kampong, there're only few nursery in Singapore. I will say that handling customers 20 years ago were quite easy. Actually I love this question! Let me tell you about these customers. First, they're not picky. Their standards were not too high. At that time the government also didn't push too hard on horticulture. Second, they're not so knowledgeable. Also, I feel that at the point of time, a lot of Singaporeans were very rich. There's no economic crisis, so a lot of people are loaded. At that time to get contract was very easy.   12. Please tell me some stories of your best day in business or your proudest achievement to date. There're numbers of best days, but among these I'm proud to say that we've done decoration for the national parade for five rounds in the late 90s in the national stadium. It's not an easy job. However this is my proudest achievement because not everybody is able to do this in so many years. We're proud doing the decoration where all the ministers are involved. Our prime minister and president will be there too.   13. Do you recall your worst day in business? The worst day is not when I have to work harder day and night. I actually feel happy and even feel more energetic. The worst day in this business was when you worked with someone happily, but it turned when they walked away with the money. As you know, in all of these 20 years, we have partnerships. You've worked so hard for the partner or work together with this partner, but in the end you're left with nothing but problems and he took everything. That demoralised me. Why should I work so hard and why should I do so much, if all would turn this way?   14. When was the moment you realised that the business would work? In my worst day I've ever thought of that this business would not work. Many friends behind me tried to scratch my back and told me to join them to do other business. At that time I considered that if I go to other trades I'd have to start all over again. With my character, I don't mind to start all over again, but how many years I would have? So, I decided to go back to the trade I had confidence with. Horticultural to me is like a fingertip. I don't need to refer to books to talk about plants' characteristics and names, price list, how to deploy the man and procedures. They're all in my mind. When I talk to customers, when it comes to designing, when it comes to negotiating or implementing, everything is so easy and I have the confidence. I talk and work with confidence. Many people thinks that horticultural trade is like a dirty trade, as it's very smelly and dirty for example when you sprayed the medicine. However, they're actually not. I find that it's ok. That's why I try to teach my staff that this is a respectable job, a skilful job that not everybody could handle.   15. What are some of the things you have had to overcome to succeed? We're trying to find the way out on how we can do vertical work planting and e-commerce. Now, the government encourages a lot of roof top planting. Roof top planting is quite easy, but it depends on technology a lot. We're still under the experimental stage to actually beautify the building concrete work where plants can grow. The next sector is e-commerce. We haven't yet succeeded, but it should be achieved in one month. This is my dream because not everybody could do this. There are some people doing this but it's not in a big and full scale. My dream is to overcome this problem and to do better things than what they've done to give more products for Singaporeans at the moment.   16. What are some qualities that you feel you possess which differentiate you from someone who works for others? I think it's very important to makes sure that everybody is satisfied. Whatever things I do, I make sure that I do it 100%. We have to treat our clients, workers, suppliers like brother and sisters to run this business as a family. When I satisfy the clients, they'll pay me money. When I satisfy the staff, they'll stay along with me. When I satisfy my foreign workers, they're happy, they'll work harder. I satisfy my suppliers, they'll deliver good things to me. So I think this is very important   17. To succeed in business, what qualities are essential? What are some of the 'secrets' in making a successful business? To succeed in business, you have to give more thoughts to the clients. You understand nowadays that the clients are not stupid, majority of them are highly educated. So during the transaction, you have to show them that you're care for them. You'll realise that it will be easy to deal with them and finally to get the deal. Business does not depend only on your clients but also your staff. You cannot do business without staff. One man show cannot do everything. Take care your staff and give them more thoughts on their problems. They'll appreciate that. Do not just stick to dealing with money only. I pay you money and you do your work, that's it. It's not supposed to be like that.   18. Who or what inspires you? My mother is one of them because I've seen through my mom's days. As a son, seeing my mom suffered throughout the hardest day before they have this landscape business and from having nothing until something, I think she is the person who actually inspires me. Until now she still wants to work. We told her not to work, but she doesn't like to be at home. She's more than 80 years old but she's still healthily watering plants all around.   19. Have you ever thought of expanding the business in some way or in multiple locations? How and where? That's the reason why there're few retails of our company running now. If you stick to one place, a lot of people would not know what Ban Nee Chen is. So if we can branch out more you'll find it much easier to expose our company. When customers want to visit you, the place is not too far for them. When we have few locations, at least they're given choices to go to area that is better for them. E-commerce would also enable us to expose our company especially to local.   20. Are there any aspects of expansion would you like to see for your enterprise? Of course, there is. We want to go to China and Thailand. Right now we've made a lot of survey. There are also all of my relatives over there. It will make us easier to control and start. I think Dubai and Doha are in our consideration too. However, all these will depend on e-commerce. Once it's ready in one month time, we'll see how the sales turnover in the local market is. Once it's proven to be ok, we'll go overseas. This would help me a lot.   21. In your opinion, how would you define entrepreneurship? .I think entrepreneurship deals with challenges rather than money and achievement. If people are not interested in challenges, they won't step out. The trade may let you earn a lot of money, but if you don't experience the challenges, you won't earn a lot. Only people who are willing to be in challenges, stress, problems and carry burdens on their shoulders, are be able to achieve what they want. Not everybody can do that. People offered you 5 million dollars, but do you want to be an entrepreneur? Not everybody wants it because there's a challenge.   22. To what extent does ones educational level help or hinder entrepreneurialship? Experience always comes first. It doesn't mean that anyone with horticulturalist certificate is a good horticulturalist. People get certificates through studying in school. They learn it by hard, memorise everything to take the exam and as they pass the exam, they get the certificate. A good horticulturalist must be able to do hands on and learn from experience. Knowledge from school only contributes 30% whereas the actual experience contributes 70% to be a good horticulturalist. The book does help but when it comes to practical you need to use experience and whatever taught in the school to apply them together. From my experience, hands on will double up your knowledge by 2 or 4 times depending on how fast your brain works. I also find that to be an entrepreneur, people have to study commerce. It helps a lot of daily work like dealing with people and cost control. A lot of horticulturalist cannot achieve what they want probably because they didn't study commerce.   23. As we try to select the final 42 entrepreneurs, what qualities would you think a person should have to inspire others? It's the caring for society and environment. To be honest with you, I'm trying to work on more charity basis, but too bad to say that we don't have 'everyday is Sunday'. We have a bad day also. Even now we're in down period whereby sometimes retails' sales are not good. I always tell my staff, in time comes if 'everyday is Sunday', as we'll be able to get more business from e-commerce and new marketing schemes, we need to do something to the society. So I think it's the caring to the society and environment that is very important.   24. What do you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? There are a lot of thing to be passed down, I've ever thought of publishing a book actually. [laughs] Many staff whom I terminated wonders why I terminated them. It's actually because they don't have enough knowledge and experience. So, what I can pass to the younger generation now is to learn from hands on. Don't be afraid of dirt or if your position is low, down to cleaning table or whatever. You never know that the aunties who clean tables need some skill that you were never taught. From hands on, you'll know the problems of other people and kind of problem you can predict on site. When you know these problems, you'll know how to overcome with solutions and suggestion. Hands on plus caring, work happily, treating the clients as family will make the business goes on.   25. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? I have to be very honest with you. When you want to be an entrepreneur, start as an employee first. It's only when you work for 10 to 15 years, then you'll have enough saving. The interest in work also must be very big. Youth time is very dangerous and tough because they're lacking of experience. Singapore is a small country, there're lots of competitors. If they're young, how are they going to overcome this? They've to know about pricing, where to get the clients, and so on. However, if there's a total different trade that nobody does, I want to tell the entrepreneurs, "Go ahead and do!"   26. Do you foresee the future entrepreneurs conducting their businesses in a different way than entrepreneurs from the past 5 years? (Yes or No) Yes.   27. Do you feel that the future entrepreneurs have a higher chance to succeed than the entrepreneurs from the past 5 years? (Yes or No) No.   28. What are your reasons for your answers in Q.26 and Q27? For Q26, they'll surely change, even myself has been changing recently also. Technology modifies our work so that we can cut cost but get the same productivity or even higher productivity. Like what people say, if only I had one button to push and everything started to work non stop. I know one of factory owners, he employed 1000 workers, 5 years later reduced to 500, and then one day he only employed 10 supervisors. Machines run automatically. That's why technology will help entrepreneurs change the way they run the business. Also, the knowledge and research from schools and institutes for example new products from the cross breed plants will definitely change the way we run our business. For Q27, the economy is bad especially for the private sectors. I know the government tried very hard to help them but I think working as a staff is better and will give you easy life. Singapore is too small. There're lots of entrepreneurs in market already so if the young one want to come and fight with them, either their service must be very good or the price must be very competitive. To fight with the existing brand and with the person whose name is already in the market is not easy.